Intern Reveals The Inner Scoop And Dark Secrets Of clickTRUE

This is what I have learned here, using sensational headlines to get people to read an article. If you clicked out of curiosity then this really works haha.

It is my last day at work here, and it is with mixed feelings that I am writing this. Happy that I’m finally going for my “delayed holiday”, and sad that I’ll be leaving this great place where I’m entitled to the largest and most pristinely polished white table in the office!

But FINALLY, I don’t have to do this:

But I will miss taking buses 8 and 125 and then walking a unholy distance to get to the office and also rushing down like a mad dog at 6.40pm sharp to catch the shuttle bus home..

Now let’s recount the days which flashed by so, so fast..

Background

I was actually involved in online marketing for around a year when I joined, with 2 of my websites making a decent amount of money.

Life was good.

It was then that I stopped tweaking my sites because I thought I had made it already, and university was real busy!

Big mistake.

After the big bad penguin from Google struck my sites, I realized I still had lots to learn, and I learned tons of it from my internship here.

And of course, I learned how to slap that damn penguin back.

Learnings

What was most valuable for me here was not learning technical skills, those I have some and can study on my own.

What was invaluable was learning how to think, learning how to learn, and just getting my ass out there in the real world.

1. Learning how to think

This I learned from COO Jereme who I worked under primarily. I still can’t believe he studied electrical engineering in university LOL. His marketing expertise and experience says otherwise.

Marketing has always been about getting the right message to the right people at the right time, and is an art form you just cannot glean from the textbooks.

Just from the interactions with the experienced boss has allowed me to look at things differently and pick up those little details subconsciously, like picking his brain as they say.

For instance, I used to think that my copywriting skills were decent and passable. But it was from his remarks and guidance about my blog posts that I began to see areas I could improve, and things that I have never thought before.

This brought about a deeper level of awareness, and it spurred me on to study materials from legendary copywriters such as Claude Hopkins and Gary Halbert. And of course, then being able to appreciate their work.

And from researching and writing the blog posts, I gained an even deeper level of understanding about digital marketing and digital strategy as a holistic whole, rather than as a hodge-podge of individual techniques (such as SEO, SEM, etc).

The best part was Jereme allowing me to try my hands on copywriting for sales pages/landing pages, because for me, knowledge is nothing without experience. It is only with experience that knowledge becomes wisdom.

Although my first one didn’t convert too well, just heard from Jereme that my second one sales page was converting at 11%! Woah!

But the most awesome part was that I took these skills, went back to revamp my own site, and managed to increase the conversion rates of my squeeze page by 3x! and I see still MORE room for improvement!

Gamification and user experience (UX) are two other topics which I was exposed to by Jereme. But due to my lack of experience, I am still some way off mastering these topics. Regardless, I am very thankful for learning the right way in approaching these topics, as a solid foundation makes further exploration so much easier.

2. Learning how to learn

Learning how to learn is a skill, a very important skill!

In many of the things we do, I believe there is no right or wrong way of doing things. Everything is relative, and so there can only be a better or a worse way of doing things.

Again, I picked up from Jereme some of the tools to use to make life easier, and also learning where to learn, and from whom to learn. It comes down to “awareness” again.

For instance, from some of the resources/blogs that he shared, I gained a new level of understanding of marketing and business principles and from there, began exploring on my own too.

Without this exposure, I shudder to think when I will get exposed to them if left on my own.

3. Getting my ass out there in the industry

But I am still most grateful for being given the chance to get exposed to the real world.

You know, working from home is good, but you hit a plateau fast. And studying in school is like studying in a mind prison! Outdated syllabus, and exam gradings are so rigid and subjective.

For instance did you know that in the real world, the ad below on the left (cartoonish) actually outperformed the one on the right (professional graphics)?

Scoring well in exams just requires a cogent, well substantiated argument based upon a set of assumptions that the marker agrees with (at least for marketing/humanities).

But in the real world, it is all about creativity, testing, and making constant improvements based upon a set of best practices.

Experience

The icing on the cake must be the culture here. Great, warm, and friendly. The bosses are capable, willing to share and have their individual sense of humour. As for the staff, they are responsible, hardworking and equally capable. Most importantly, they know to work hard and play hard.

The only thing they are lacking in is not having this initiative as suggested by DA JIE: paid, paid vacation. Very meta.

Really glad that our huge age gap didn’t make interaction weird or anything. Ok I’m just kidding because we are all quite young here seriously haha.

So if you are yearning to get an unadulterated, real education and not one churned out by the profit driven mind prison that is your school, don’t wait anymore, just send in your resume and cover letter, you won’t regret it! 🙂